Roy Jones Warns: Chavez Has Really Good Shot To Beat Canelo!

By Edward Chaykovsky

Former four division world champion Roy Jones Jr. is really looking forward to the Cinco de Mayo showdown set for Saturday, May 6 - when two-division world champion Saul "Canelo" Alvarez (48-1-1, 34KOs) and former WBC middleweight world champion Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. (50-2-1, 32 KOs) will collide.

The T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas is sold out with over 20,000 tickets getting snapped up.

There is a catch-weight of 164.5-pounds. Canelo holds the WBO junior middleweight title and moves up from 154-pounds. Chavez Jr. fought at 168-pounds last December, and has to squeeze down a few pounds.

Canelo is a very big favorite to win the fight, but Jones is giving the much bigger Chavez Jr. a very good shot to pull off the upset win.

Many that are picking against Chavez Jr. believe he will struggle to make weight and deplete himself.

"You can never count Chavez Jr. out because of his effort and the way that his whole career has gone. He was a guy who started boxing and none of us really gave him a chance to do much of anything because he didn’t even have an extensive amateur background. To go as far as he went without having any amateur fights was a tremendously remarkable feat. With that being said, there’s nothing you can say that he can’t do because how many guys do we know that turn pro with no amateur background and become a world champion?," Chavez Jr. told On The Ropes Boxing Radio.

"To me, Chavez Jr. is in a win-win situation, he can’t lose either way. For him to have the guts to fight Canelo with no amateur background, he’s won already. Secondly, he can’t lose even if he did lose because he’s a guy who goes up to 190lbs, so for him to get down to 168lbs is not an easy feat anyways. You do have to give him a chance because there’s a size advantage, he may be able to take a little bit more if he’s not too drained from making weight. I think he’s going to be fine, I think it’s going to be a great fight and I think he has a really good chance of winning."

Jones also expects a lot of fans at the T-Mobile to back Chavez Jr. on the day of the fight. Canelo has been getting a lot of heat from fans, over the continued delay to finalize a mega-bout with middleweight king Gennady Golovkin.  

"Now Chavez is fighting a fellow Mexican and that means that he’s going to give it all he’s got, he’s going to put his front foot forward and he knows he’s probably in for the fight of his life because not only is it a Mexican battle but it’s a Mexican battle for Mexican supremacy. A lot of people are going to cheer for Chavez because they are mad that Canelo Alvarez because he’s not fighting Gennady Golovkin," Jones said.